Virtualization Jobs Are Hot! (How To Hack Your Resume)

5 Resume Hacks That Will Get You Noticed and Interviewed for [NEW] Cloud and DevOps Jobs…

The rush has begun and more businesses are boldly starting to move their precious tier 1 applications to the cloud. But the problem they are running into is finding skilled staff to architect the trip there. Yes, it is getting harder, and harder, to find expertise and that is where I want to focus on for this lesson.

Cold Calls…

If you’re like me you get at least 2 – 4 emails or calls each week from recruiters looking for cloud architects with a VMware or DevOps backgrounds.

Samples:

Hi Joe,

Thanks for getting back to me! I am getting quite a few Azure and AWS positions in lately and candidates with those backgrounds tend to be hard to come by in the Phoenix market. Do know of any good local networking groups where people with strong cloud backgrounds would be found?

Or

Hello Joe,

This is to inform you that your profile has been shortlisted for Devops Manager. We are looking for someone who has excellent work experience in the following skills:

One reason is that businesses with a vSphere or private cloud have projects in the pipeline to migrate to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) in the public cloud before the end of the year, or sooner.

See the problem…or should I say the opportunity?

What have I determined by reviewing the job descriptions sent to me (see samples above)? It’s because most talent is too focused on one technology (mostly VMware). And it’s going to take more than vSphere experience to forklift apps to the cloud. Now, regardless how I feel about fork lifting apps and servers, businesses are doing it and they need people with diverse virtualization “and” cloud expertise to get it done.

So, if you are looking for new opportunities in today’s IT job market and you want to leverage your virtualization experience while also learning cool stuff about the cloud, now is the perfect time to do it.

Did you find any examples of jobs in your hometown? The job market is only going to grow more for people with these skills.

Here’s how to hack your resume:

Hack #1 (Project Work) – Don’t be afraid to show your experience (or age). In today’s market, experience outweighs youth and sometimes degrees. Though a degree is better for the long-term career in management, expertise is better for today’s need. And the more project experience you have building apps, databases, and web servers, the better chances you have because your expertise reduces the risk of downtime. Always put project experience in your resume.

Hack #2 (Proof of Concepts)– If you don’t already have cloud experience, create yourself a free (or paid) account on AWS, Azure, and Google cloud (yes, all 3) and get learning. Spin up some apps on a VM and install Apache and/or IIS, and don’t forget to learn the lingo. Then tear it down and start over until you can do it in your sleep. Once you can spin things up, next learn to import from external sources. Knowing how to migrate VMs from VMware, Xen, KVM or any other stack all adds value to your expertise. Once you can build and import servers into the cloud, add it to your resume as proof of concept projects (PoC).

Hack #3 (Scripting Experience) – Learn to script in Bash, Perl, Ruby, Python, PowerShell and any other languages that are used for automating build and orchestration processes. Learn what APIs are and how they work. Test some scripts and add them to your resume as PoCs. For example, Wrote Perl script to spin up VM using Google’s cloud API.

Hack #4 (Toolbox) – Learn tools like Chef, Puppet, Salt, GitHub and any other tools that do software automation and server configuration management. Yes, there are many to choose from so get [REALLY] good on at least two of them. Do PoCs and add them to your list.

Hack #5 (DevOps) – Get up to speed with DevOps. Buy some books and watch some DevOps videos. Surround yourself with what’s emerging in service delivery because this is where a lot of new jobs are going. The key here is collaboration and communication skills. Yes, note how you work well with other teams, and how you can switch between being a server admin to configuring network ports, and then to carving out storage. Or whatever your forte of skills may include.

Note: I never said it would be easy…It will take “effort”! But for anyone who has been supporting or engineering virtual environments you are already ahead of the pack. Now we’re just adding more tools to your toolbox. My advice, don’t limit yourself with just one virtual or cloud technology, learn them all and I can guarantee you will never be out of job opportunities.

Finally … Getting it done!

These resume hacks will get you interviews and even jobs – guaranteed, but delivering and getting it done is your part!

If you don’t already have one, build a lab at home so you can solve the problems you are working on at work. Yes, I’m saying to burn midnight oil…People with passion solve problems because they don’t stop at 5 with the rest of the crowd. You can have a work-life balance after you “Get it Done”…Good luck!